San Francisco (day 2)

The weather did not turn out for me today. Oh well. My knee wasn't going to let me walk around too much today anyway. Plus there's that whole "work" thing. So I've been bouncing around from place to place today stealing wifi and power. The day started with a diner-like breakfast near the BART stop I selected at random. It was ok, but despite having "Coffee Shop" in the name, it was without wifi or anything beyond drip brews.

I consulted Yelp while eating my veggie omelette and found my next stop, Contraband Coffee Bar. It was an obvious choice with over 200 reviews on Yelp with a 4.5 star rating. The espresso was very tasty (though for my second cup the female barista made regular instead of decaf, so I've been crazy jittery all afternoon). It was also a lovely place to hang out. Good atmosphere and fun people. The music was pretty good for the first half of my stay, but graduated to metal for the second half. Near the end of my stay, the male barista (baristo? barister?) commented that a regular customer who had just left was "the guitar player in Almost Famous." As many of you know, this is one of my top 5 favorite films of all time. That said, Billy Crudup was definitely not in the coffee shop (he lives in NYC and is probably in some Broadway play right now). I decided not to correct him, but having not seen the person I could not tell you who it was. Oh well.

After that I had a brief lunch at Modern Thai. I was in the mood for some noodles. But there was still work to be done and the misty weather wasn't doing anything to help my willpower, so I moved across the street to Leland Tea Company for a non-caffeinated afternoon beverage. I haven't left yet. The proprietor is very friendly and talkative. We chatted for 5 minutes before tea even came up. I settled on his suggestion of blending the Rooibos Chai with some vanilla. He is also the baker and the other customers and I were part of the decision process of what treats were to be baked this afternoon. The answer was one batch of Earl Grey scones with caramel and one with dark chocolate. And guess what, he doesn't like chocolate either! Take that, everyone else! Oh, and the music has been old jazz/soul in the Nina Simone/Billie Holiday vein. So in short, if you're in San Francisco's Nob Hill neighborhood (or anywhere in the city really), definitely stop here!

My final train ride is at 10pm tonight. Emily is going to put her best effort to get home before then (she has not the last two nights... yay harvest time!) so we can actually catch up before I head out. Fingers crossed! Also, she promised me better cocktails than I had in Chicago. We'll see about that...

And at this time tomorrow my journey will be over! Portland in 23 hours! I'll keep the blog alive for a while, particularly until I find somewhere to live. That's all for now!